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Monday, 2 March 2015

Taking Stock

So, here we are, 15 and a half weeks since Warlords of Draenor launched.

I played feverishly for 6 weeks and made decent progress, then Christmas and all of its inherent busyness and visitors threw me of kilter. After things settled down again, I got back into playing poker and that absorbed all my attention for a while. I ended up being away from WoW for 8 weeks. Needless to say, I am behind the curve. I have some catching up to do, and I'm a little hazy on which character was doing what and why. This seems as good a time as any to do a stock taking of the situation and lay out my plans and set some sort of a routine for myself.

Goals

I am a unrepentant game completionist, always have been, always will be, and playing an MMO doesn't change that. Nothing less than everything will do but I do dislike PvP, so if I achieve or complete things in that area I consider it a bonus; it's not something I actively work on.

My main still has much to be done, both in the current expansion and in others, so Eccentrica will get the most attention. There are recipes, pets and mounts to be collected, reputations to cap and quests to finish. I also want to work on quest completion. recipe collections and reps on my primary alts. Each chief professional has much to do in these areas.

I have two guilds on my current server, one which I have recently designated for levelling toons, and the other for Current Content toons. I have completed transferring materials into the appropriate guild banks, and must next work on moving pre-WoD toons into the levelling guild.

I would like work more on gold acquisition. Not merely for the sake of having it, but to allow me to round out collections and achievements with purchaseable items. Mammoths and Yaks aren't exactly cheap, and I would like to have the gold to be able to buy what I want, when I want. I also experience chronic storage issues, and want to be able to kit every character and banks slot with Hexweave Bags. I have 3 Tailors, but bag crafting is still slow business.

I would like to have all my 'main' characters kitted out as best as possible, which translates into raiding of some form, most likely LFR. So I need to get them all through content at a regular pace.

Lastly, I do crave one of every race/class combo. This is not a small undertaking, and is the larger long-term ambition.

Budget

As with all things, you can't determine what you can do until you know what you're working with. A time budget is in order, but not one so restrictive as to turn the game into a job or to strip it of all joy and spontaniety.

Three days a week I have 4-5 hours to play. Two days I could get in 6-7, and two days I could manage 8-10 hours. So my time budget is 40 - 49 hours a week. Some weeks will present fewer playing opportunities and some weeks more. (Note to the shocked: I don't sleep very much, and I do not watch television).

I have found that fully functional garrisons take 15 minutes to 'work' per day. This includes the mine, herb garden, collecting and filling work orders, crafting daily cooldowns, completing and starting follower missions, collecting resources, trapping wolves for fur, and throwing excess materials into the guild bank. Eight fully functional garrisons would consume 2 hours per day, or 14 hours per week, leaving me 26 - 35 hours for other activities.

Plan

A week's typical general output would be attending the garrison, questing, current dailies, LFR, old content work and crafting. Garrisons, questing, and current dailies would be done on a daily basis. I would like to work on old content dailies, but I will have to see where I shoehorn it in. LFR is best done on Tuesday or Wednesday. Old content work such as raids and dungeons require longer play sessions, so one of the weekend days. Crafting for sales I intend to do once a week only, probably also on a weekend day, since it is rather time consuming.

Within the allotted time budget for current content I would also like to accomplish the following:
- All current quests on all characters
- All exploration and all treasures on all characters
- Seek out all needed profession followers for all characters.

Next post I will take a character inventory of where things stand and flesh out what needs to be done.